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March 09, 2015

Terror Attack in Israel? CNN Can't Find the Words

photo: Thomas Coex, AFP/Getty Images

On Friday, a Palestinian man rammed his car into five Israeli
border policewomen and then ran over an Israeli riding a bicycle on Shimon
HaTzadik Street near a light rail station in Jerusalem. The attacker got out of
his car assaulting the pedestrians with a knife before police stopped
him by shooting at him. The victims were taken to the hospital with moderate to
light injuries and the attacker was also taken to the hospital. One other person
was treated for shock.

During this November’s spate of terror attacks in Jerusalem,
CNN reported in an outlandish manner on the brutal killings at a synagogue in
the Har Nofneighborhood. Their first
headline read “Deadly attack on Jerusalem mosque” and their follow up story
changed the headline to “4 Israelis, 2 Palestinians dead in Jerusalem,” simply
counting the killers who had hacked the rabbis to death among victims.

For news from Israel it’s usually most reliable to go
directly to Israeli news sources, for instance to Times of IsraelorYnet News.
In their stories, you not only get
the actual details about the attack but other connected information such as the
fact that this street was “also the site of a November 5 hit and run terror
attack that killed one border police officer and injured 13 others. The area
has seen no less than five terror attacks this past year.”

By contrast, the only other information included in the CNN
article is a seemingly gratuitous reference to the number of Palestinians
killed during this summer’s conflict.

CNN used to call itself “the most trusted name in news” and
it’s good to know that this slogan has been retired.

Now they call themselves “America’s best news team” but many
American outlets did a better job than CNN reporting from Jerusalem this week.